


sudden wave upon the night

by benzedrine



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Hogwarts Eighth Year, M/M, but not in that order?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-20
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2019-01-01 02:56:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12147117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/benzedrine/pseuds/benzedrine
Summary: All they can do is swim above the rising sea.





	sudden wave upon the night

**Author's Note:**

> this entire fic was born out of the lyric "we don't fight, we just fuck" from girl by the internet. it then slowly extended to fit around the song riverside by fleece, which the title is taken from. once again, this is a shameless bit of self-indulgent angst, because i've reached the conclusion i can't write anything much longer than a one shot or happier than a couple of weird, vague resolution paragraphs at the end of something quick and dramatic. anyway, i hope you enjoy this! :)

The first time they kiss is the first time Harry brings up the war. Draco is itching for a fight. They aren’t friends, not really, but somehow two boys with nightmares end up spending time by the lake, somehow they fall into a pattern. Passing cigarettes back and forth between their cold, shivering hands, sharing secrets and stories about their childhoods, their friends, their hearts.

The first time they kiss, Draco’s hand is on his wand, knuckles white, his whole body thrumming with this _need_ to release the build-up of frustration and anger and guilt. Harry just starts rambling on about the war with such careless ease and Draco can’t stand it. He’s poised and ready, waiting for Harry to turn back into that angry schoolboy Draco remembers antagonising only a few years ago. He thinks he sees it, the blazing heat in Harry’s eyes, his fist tightening as if it were readying itself for a punch, and then Harry’s hands are tangled in Draco’s hair and they’re kissing, hard and fast and teeth and tongue.

Draco thinks that he prefers this, and _oh_ , he can feel all the ways in which Harry prefers this too.

*

After a while, this, too, becomes routine. Stealing, hot, angry words out of each other’s mouths with kisses, before someone says something they can’t take back.

They move seamlessly from kissing to cool hands slipping underneath waistbands. Draco had expected something to shift between them, some sort of tangible change to manifest in the spaces they left empty and detached, and in a way it did. They learn each other over cold nights spent pressed up against trees.

Draco remembers there being a thin line between hate and love, but no one had told him about lust, about the all-consuming need to have and to be had. No one told him about the ways that fighting can so easily turn into fucking, and how quickly you can slip over the edge into something so familiar and so new.

*

The seasons change and nothing between them does. Draco thinks he could draw a map of Harry’s body, of all the places he hides, of all the places that get him making _that_ noise, of all the bruises and marks his skin carries.

They know more about each other than they have any right to, know all the ways to turn the other into writhing messes, know the stories behind each and every one of the other’s scars. They talk about the long thick lines stretching from Draco’s chest to his hips, forgetting the climax of another year that they had both been pawns on opposing sides of a war.

Draco thinks he could forgive Harry if it weren’t for the way he feels at the heated looks he starts seeing him cast across classrooms, the knowing smirks he sees Harry fling his way as he walks so casually through a doorway to an abandoned part of the castle before settling on his knees at Draco’s feet.

*

By the time the spring comes, their kisses become more refined, less like a battle, their touches no longer feeling like stolen moments of time, no longer existing separately from their lives outside of each other.

*

May heralds a change in Harry that Draco should have seen coming from a mile away, and probably could have if he hadn’t been so busy focussing on continuing to avoid those difficult subjects that the two of them could never navigate together.

Draco knows they should talk about it, knows that they should at least attempt to broach the topic of the war and maybe even throw in an apology or two, or a heartfelt speech about how he spent an entire seven years at school with Harry Potter wondering how he could change for him, how he could be more than his father’s son, and all the ways in which he failed them both.

Draco knows that Harry being so quiet and angry and sad is not something he can control, no matter how much he wishes he could, no matter how much his traitorous heart seems to sink at every bitter curl of Harry’s mouth in place of a smile, no matter how much he thinks he’s come to care for this boy who’s had to carry the weight of an entire world on his shoulders from the day he was born.

Draco knows what Harry will ask him for, knows that right now they’re only just managing to manipulate years of mutual hatred, and maybe more than a little envy on Draco’s part, into something that separates them from the agendas of everyone around them, that they’ve had to live with for so long.

Draco knows all of this and still, he hears himself saying, “I think we should talk about it.”

*

“I think we should talk about it,” he begins, “What we did, how we’re do _ing_.” The words feel bitter in his mouth, and he wonders how he didn’t choke while trying to get them out.

“Talk,” Harry spits out, “What is there to talk about? Good people died. Because of me, because of _us_ , and there’s nothing I can do. Neither of us can do anything.”

Draco feels that familiar tug, that uncomfortable shift within him that he can only associate with Harry.

“I just –”

“You just what? Tell me, Draco, go on. Tell me all about how sacrifices had to be made and people change and how it’s important to consider the few vs. the many.”

It feels much like untying a knot, the first peal of laughter that Draco hears emerging from deep within his belly. A full, real burst of laughter that should be wholly inappropriate for the conversation they’re having, but somehow Harry’s laughing too now, they’re shaking in each other’s arms, cackling away at the side of the lake on a day that almost everyone they know is more likely to be spending with tear stained cheeks and conversations in low, hushed voices. It should be inappropriate, but it feels so _natural_ that neither one of them can stop.

It takes a while before Draco manages to wheeze out, “We never fight anymore, or even argue like that. We just fuck.”

Harry stops laughing to push a strand of Draco’s hair back into place, and smiles. “It’s more fun though, don’t you think? I like this. I like you.”

Draco’s not laughing anymore either. Instead, he’s trying to control the erratic beating of his heart, and _how_ did he get here, how did a few late night conversations, and several brilliant bouts of shagging turn into this without him realising. How did he not realise that they were both extending themselves to each other and sharing in such a way that cast the horrors of the war aside and made room for something else, something made for the two of them. He had been so afraid to dip his toes into the murky depths that could be brought up by the war that he hadn’t realised they had been stepping into each other’s minds, their _lives_. They understood each other, two sides of the same coin, two boys keeping their heads above the water, swimming above the rising sea.

He reaches a hand out to Harry and pulls him in against his body. They would talk when they were both ready to.

“I like you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are much appreciated! :)


End file.
